AGARTALA, Sep 6 (TIWN): With TMC and BJP making their routes in the state it can be said that the 2018 Tripura Assembly Election will see a tug of war between TMC and BJP.

It is to be mentioned here that Congress has already lost its ground in the state after a total of 6 Congress MLA’s have left Congress and joined BJP.  Three months after six Congress MLAs in Tripura joined the Trinamool Congress, they were recognised as TMC legislators by the assembly Speaker.

Trinamool leader Sudip Roy Barman, after the verdict of Speaker Ramendra Chandra Debnath, said the six MLAs are the second largest legislature group of the party in India after West Bengal which the party rules.

The six MLAs, led by Barman, resigned from the Congress on April 7 and joined the Trinamool on June 7 in protest against the Congress pact with the Left parties in the West Bengal assembly elections.

On the other hand although slowly and gradually, but BJP is emerging as a major threat to the state opposition party Congress in Tripura’s political scenario.  The situation can be better explained with the situation where BJP in the recently held assembly poll in five states gave a serious competition to the other parties.

The latest assembly election results– Assam to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Kerala to the Left, and the return of Mamata Banerjee and J. Jayalalithaa in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu – can hardly be considered a “referendum” on the performance of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre but they do confirm the fact that the Congress, once India’s pre-eminent “national” party with a commanding presence in every state and region, has reduced itself to a regional outfit.

BJP has now come to power in Assam, even if in alliance with important regional players like the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodo Peoples Front, with an individual vote share comparable to the Congress. In West Bengal, it has doubled its vote share – compared to the 2011 assembly elections – and appears to have polled just about one percentage point less than the Congress there. Its tally of two in West Bengal and one in Kerala may not look impressive but these seats mark the formal debut of the saffron party in the two state assemblies.

Indeed, by polling nearly 10.7% of the popular vote in Kerala this time, the BJP has not only improved upon its 2011 performance but has also marginally increased its vote share beyond the 10.3% that the ‘Modi wave’ generated in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. This suggests the BJP is emerging organically in the state and not merely as an external imposition.

However both the situation depicts that both TMC and BJP will face a tug of war in 2018 Tripura Assembly Election to increase their vote banks in the state.